The Book of Things to Come (Hand of Adonai Series 1)

by Aaron Gansky

  “No,” Ullwen said quickly. “We can’t be far now.”

  “You said that five minutes ago,” Erica said.

  “Then we are five minutes closer,” Ullwen said.

  “I’m with Oliver,” Lauren said, sipping harspus sap from Ullwen’s wineskin.

  There’s a first, Oliver thought, but decided not to say it out loud.

  “Ullwen’s right,” Aiden said. “We gotta keep going. We’ve got like, no food left, and I’m not about to eat dead nar’esh. It’s too far to go back to the central chamber now. We’d have to sleep here, and I’m not cool with that. Something about sleeping with the bones of dead dwarves creeps me out.”

  Oliver asked, “What about you, Erica? You’re the deciding vote.”

  “I’m so tired right now, even a bone bed sounds good. Let’s take five, people, put our feet up, munch some bread, catch a quick nap. Whatever’s ahead of us probably isn’t friendly, and we’ll need to be on top of our game if we want to handle it.”

  Aiden and Ullwen sighed but consented. Oliver sat down against the wall, in a small space free of bones. The others followed suit, except for Ullwen. “I’ll take first watch. Half-hour shifts. We spend no more than three hours resting before pressing on.”

  “Agreed,” Oliver said, and he closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Oliver took the final watch and woke everyone a half-hour later. At least, he assumed it was thirty minutes. It could have been more. Hard to follow time without a watch, or suns to monitor. He didn’t like the idea of wasting time resting, but the group looked much better now, stronger, ready to go.

  They gathered their things and pressed forward. And, as luck would have it, in less than an hour, they came to a set of doors with a sign above them. Heavy and thick, the doors reached near twelve feet high. Gold inlaid etching adorned the black stone. He asked Lauren, “Can you read it?”

  She tilted her head back and leaned against Aiden’s chest. All of a sudden they acted like boyfriend and girlfriend. So annoying. Worse, she’d listened to him when he told her she wasn’t fat. She didn’t argue or fight with him as she had with Oliver whenever he said the same thing.

  “It says something Palace. I don’t think I can pronounce the first word.”

  “Margwar?” he asked.

  “That’s how you spell it?”

  “Apparently. This must be it, guys.” He pushed on the set of double doors. They didn’t budge. “Want to give it a shot, Aiden?”

  Aiden pushed on the doors, grunting with the effort, but they didn’t move. He stepped back and kicked one hard. The resounding clang reverberated up the Winding Roads, but the door didn’t move. “No good, bro. They must be locked or whatever. Big doors, all that gold, I’m thinking they weigh a few tons.”

  “So how do we get in?” Erica asked. She pulled at her gloves and twisted her bracelets around her arm. Sparky sniffed them and growled. “Easy, boy.”

  Lauren stepped up to the door. “I have an idea. But you’ll want to move back.”

  They did.

  Her hands shook. She pressed them to the door. Both began to quake, as did the walls around them and the ground beneath them.

  Oliver shouted over the rumbling rocks. “You’re using Quake down here?”

  “It’s the only way,” she shouted. Slowly, the walls and floor calmed down. The doors, however, continued to shake even more violently. They trembled and rumbled. They chattered and bounced across the floor like an overloaded washing machine until, finally, a tiny crack opened.

  Black rocks fell from the ceiling. Cracks shot up the walls.

  “Enough!” Ullwen shouted.

  Lauren stopped. The walls ceased chattering; the floor ceased trembling. She shook her head. “We can’t fit through a crack that small.”

  “Any more of that spell, and we’ll be crushed by the doors, or the walls may cave in.”

  Lauren sat down, pulled her knees into her chest. “So what do we do?”

  Oliver approached the gap between the doors. He slipped his fingers in. The crack spanned only inches, but it might be enough. Simple physics offered a solution. He just had to be smarter than the doors. “Leverage,” he said, offering his rognak staff to Aiden.

  Aiden looked at the staff, then the doors. “Bro, this thing will snap in half before those doors budge.”

  Oliver shook his head. “You don’t know the strength of rognak wood. Think steel, but stronger.”

  “Whatever you say,” Aiden said. He shoved the staff between the two doors and pulled.

  Oliver leaned against the staff, lending his weight, his strength to the effort. The staff bowed but held firm. Slowly, the doors squealed across the black rock floors.

  Ullwen leapt in, added his strength. They pushed until the door slid enough to let Erica squeeze through. Of course, she was the thinnest of the group by a long shot. If they wanted Aiden to be able to get through in his armor, they’d need to work a bit more.

  And they did. The staff, amazingly, held firm.

  Sparky growled again. “Guys, he’s pretty weirded out by this place. You sure it’s safe?”

  “No,” Oliver said. “But what choice do we have?” He passed through the doors.

  “Okay, so we go in, find a library, grab the book, and get out. Let’s make it like a stealth mission,” Lauren said.

  Erica eyed Aiden. “Yeah, loud clanking armor really shouts ‘stealth’ to me.” She scratched Sparky behind the ear, but the massive wolf didn’t stop growling.

  Ullwen brought his bow to the ready position. “There is little we can do, good friends. We must forge ahead, and Adonai will protect us. Remember the staff. It said neither the nests above nor the abomination below will overcome them.”

  Oliver hoped that prophecy wouldn’t mysteriously change. He prayed God would keep his faith strong. He thought of David, of Goliath. He thought of stones and slings, of giants and armor.

  Aiden passed through the gap after Ullwen. He unsheathed his sword and, with a flick of his wrist, the short golden sword erupted in flames. He swung it over his head and in front of him. He moved around in a slow circle until he found a trough of kerosene. He dipped his sword in it and lit up the room in bright orange.

  A bow on his string, Ullwen scanned the ceiling and walls. “Clear in here,” he said.

  The lobby of the dwarvish palace spread out before them. Several stone columns crafted to look like rognak trees supported the ceiling nearly twenty feet above. The columns were gnarled and uneven, black like the wood of the harspus trees, but nearly twice as thick. Branches shot out from the central columns as they neared the ceiling. Each went a different direction.

  “I’ve never seen workmanship of this quality,” Ullwen breathed.

  “Few have, other than the dwarves,” Lauren said, her neck bent back to appreciate the full level of detail. “They look alive.”

  Expansive duct work piped fresh air in from the surface. It twisted through the chamber, moved over their skin, carried with it the scent of the leaves topside. Had Oliver not known better, he’d have assumed the ancient trees to be real. Instead, he pressed forward.

  Sparky stepped lightly. His head whipped from side to side and his lips peeled up to show his front fangs. “It is pretty creepy,” Erica said.

  They walked up a center flight of stairs which led to another doorway. This one had no doors. If the dwarvish kingdom still existed, guards would have been posted on either side of this threshold, even in front of the palace, and in the foyer. Dwarves used the foyer as a place of business, a type of high-end swap meet. Here, they traded jewels, precious metals, weapons, armor, and regal clothing. It wouldn’t be uncommon for thousands of transactions to take place, each guided by the delicate economic practice of dwarvish haggling, which generally involved boisterous insults, mace wielding, shield ramming, and a fair amount of biting. The guards had to break up several hundred fights a day.

  But the barren foyer showed no signs of struggle or commerc
e. No kiosks filled the floors, no tables with merchandise, no kissing booths (favorites of the dwarvish nobility), no bartering areas or political consultants.

  A huge golden statue stood in the back of the room. Unlike the idols found in the octagonal room leading to the Winding Roads, likely some sort of church, this statue was cast entirely in gold and featured the likeness of a dwarf with a long beard and a bald head. Both hands rested on the top of a double-bladed war axe. His round, egg-shaped eyes looked solemn. Three dwarvish words emblazoned the golden podium on which it stood.

  “Is that …” Lauren began.

  “Yarborough,” Oliver said.

  “Who?” Erica asked.

  Lauren read the inscription. “The Nameless Heir.”

  “Long story,” Oliver said.

  “Are you not telling us something?” Aiden asked.

  Oliver sighed. “Lauren knows. I’ll tell you more when we get out of here. Right now, I’ll just say that he’s a friend. We’ll probably run into him sooner or later. If we make it out of here alive.”

  Ullwen stared at the statue. He reached out to it, touched the golden cheek. “Chosen by Adonai to proclaim His name to his people. The nameless to proclaim the name that saves.”

  Erica said, “Oliver, he’s speaking gibberish. Care to translate?”

  “Like I say, it’s a long story.”

  “Adonai has indeed blessed me,” Ullwen whispered.

  The detailed layout of the palace came to Oliver, perhaps unearthed from his mind because of the power of suggestion, by the sheer sensory overload of being in the place. “Okay, think I got the lay of the land now. Throne room and king’s sleeping quarters are to the left.” He gestured with his staff. “Royal library to the right. Sleeping chambers straight ahead. Book could be in the library or the throne room. Might be in the king’s sleeping quarters.”

  “Which would be the fastest?” Ullwen asked.

  “Less searching in the throne room,” Oliver said. “Dwarves like to keep trophies on display. Most are ornamental weapons, ancient artifacts and the like. Only a few books.”

  “We begin there,” Ullwen said.

  Presented this way, the idea sounded like Ullwen’s. Perfect. Let him take the fall if they got attacked by a pack of nar’esh or fangands or arachands. Oliver had used up all his patience being the scapegoat. “As you wish.”

  He took the hallway to the left. His staffs echoed in the narrow passageway. Several other passages branched from the main hall, but he stayed the course.

  The hallway led to a foyer nearly identical to the one in the front of the palace, only on a smaller scale. Here, only certain merchants were allowed to trade and barter. Mostly, it was used for entertainment—dancers and jesters and the like. But, like the first foyer, this one showed no signs of life. Worse, the room felt different—like darkness without the lack of light, a shadow with soft, indeterminate edges.

  Sparky’s hair bristled. “I’m not liking this,” Erica said.

  “Aye. I fear a great evil here,” Ullwen said.

  Lauren asked, “So I’m not the only one creeped out?”

  Aiden flicked his wrist and flames engulfed his sword. “Is it just me, or is it harder to breathe in here?”

  Oliver saw what they couldn’t. A perceptible dark mist, almost like smoke, hung in the room. Heaviest near the ceiling, it billowed down like diseased clouds over a mountaintop. “Maybe we should start someplace else.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Sparky rushed into the throne room. The sick, thick cloud enveloped him and obscured him from Oliver’s view. Something very dark, very dangerous loomed ominously beyond the threshold. Worse, Oliver had no idea what.

  Erica called after Sparky and ran in, but stopped almost as suddenly as her feet crossed the threshold. Her face pulled into a mask of fear and shock.

  Oliver didn’t wait. He rushed the room. The others followed on his heels.

  Sour air filled the dimly lit room. Each breath was like drinking rotten lemon juice. Oliver fought down a wave of nausea and hoped not to vomit in front of Erica.

  A man stood before the throne. He wore a flowing white Mage’s robe with black arcane symbols embroidered along his sleeves. The man turned. Even in the thick shadows of his heavy hooded cloak, the golden eye sockets of his black mask glowed. Instead of a mouth, two thick gold vertical stripes dripped down from nose to chin as if painted hastily. In one hand, he held an obsidian-tipped partisan; its blade displayed the same gold arcane symbols as his robe. In the other hand, he held an ancient red-leather bound tome seized against his chest.

  The Book of Sealed Magic.

  * * *

  “The Mage Lord,” Oliver whispered.

  Lauren’s heart seized. Too early. They weren’t ready. If they fought the Mage Lord now, they’d be slaughtered.

  The Mage Lord spoke, each word coming out more as a choir of disparate voices. “You seek The Book of Things to Come.”

  “You got it?” Aiden asked. “Turn it over, bro. I don’t want to have to cut you into pieces.”

  “My quarrel is not with you,” he said.

  A strange anger burned in Lauren. “But ours is with you. Give us The Book of Sealed Magic.”

  “In time, perhaps. I have work for it yet.” He lifted his staff, and behind him, a shimmer of light glowed softly in the gloom.

  A hulking black form appeared on the throne.

  “I have work I must see to.” The Mage Lord slashed the air in front of him, and another shimmering ripple appeared before him. He stepped through it and vanished, as did the strange sparkling air.

  Her heart steadied. They didn’t have to fight him. Still, she’d hoped they’d found their way back to North Chester, hoped they’d be able to get The Book of Sealed Magic and finally go back home.

  The mammoth form on the throne stirred. Six feet when sitting, the hulking beast’s two massive horns stuck up another two feet. If a bull mated with a professional wrestler, this would be the child.

  Erica asked, “Is that …”

  It grunted and stood up.

  Standing, the Minotaur’s big brother loomed near nine feet tall. The tips of his bone horns stretched toward the ceiling. Much of the flesh on the face of the bull’s head had pulled away, as if it had been ravaged by some flesh-eating bacteria. Seeping sores covered its hairy body from the neck to the human’s hairy torso to the bullish legs. Its two massive eyes had been stitched shut. Blood crusted around the thick, black thread running between upper and lower eyelids. A human skull adorned the golden stave he held.

  The idols they’d smashed in the room before the Winding Roads. This must be the demon they’d sculpted. The form was nearly identical.

  “You are not dwarves, but still you have come to pay homage? Very well. I will accept your worship, but you must kneel before me.” Its voice sounded like a radio tuned to a dead channel. Apparently, despite the stitched eyelids, it could see just fine.

  “Pay homage to whom?” Ullwen asked.

  The beast lumbered forward slowly. It bent to further inspect them. Fear froze them.

  “You are a monk?” it asked.

  Oliver nodded.

  What was left of its lip curled and showed massive, bone-crushing teeth. “You are a servant of Adonai?” The static in his voice buzzed furiously.

  Aiden whispered, “Bro, he sounds angry. Take the robe off a minute, just till we get out of here.”

  No chance. Unmistakably, they faced some demon, a false god, even. Lauren knew neither Vicmorn nor Oliver would bend their knee to a false deity, no matter how fearsome or brutal.

  Why couldn’t he get past the Jesus thing for a minute and realize what kind of trouble they were in? Kneel, Lauren thought. Her hand reached for his, pulled his fingers weakly.

  “Who are you?” Oliver asked, his voice defiant but unsteady.

  The beast straightened his back. He pounded his chest. “I am Belphegor, lord of the dwarves and the mountains. None may stand before me
. You will kneel, now,” it buzzed.

  “Don’t do it,” Oliver said.

  She wanted to kneel, wanted to not fight. But she didn’t. Despite her fear, she trusted Oliver.

  “You will kneel, or you will die.”

  “Bro, I hope you got a really good plan, because this guy looks like he wants to boil us up for dinner.”

  Ullwen nocked an arrow on his string and took aim.

  “You have made your choice.” Belphegor smashed the butt of his stave into the earth. Instantly, the black sockets of the skull on the stave glowed red. A crimson flash filled the room, and Lauren’s knees bent.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Adonai’s power defeated the strange kings of old. He guided his people through the sands of the deserts, through the cold of the mountain tops, through the dark forests of the Otherlands. Adonai led His people, and His people followed.

  —The Book of Ancients

  INSTEAD OF TAKING THE school bus home, Bailey Renee zipped up her parka and walked down Hemlock Drive to Aspen Ave. She caught the city bus downtown, where she got off on Grand. Hood snug over her ears and cheeks, she walked two more blocks to North Chester Police Department.

  Deputy Parker sat in his office, papers strewn across his desk. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and another behind his ear. The office reeked of stale cigarette smoke. He’d taken several of the photo frames from the line of file cabinets and put them on the portions of the desk not buried in papers. For a minute, she considered picking them up, looking them over, but figured that’d be too forward. Still, it’d buy her time. She took off her coat and sat down in the chair she’d sat in yesterday and crossed her legs quietly.

  He set a few papers aside, keenly aware that she stared at him patiently, took the cigarette out of his lips and put it behind his other ear. “You said it had to do with Sarah?”